Perkins, Associate Professor of English at Prince George's Community College in Maryland, explores how Esquivel's use of magic realism in Like Water for Chocolate reinforces the novel's celebration and condemnation of domesticity.

In an interview with Laura Esquivel, published in the New York Times Book Review, Molly O'Neill notes that Like Water for Chocolate has not received a great deal of critical attention because it is "often consigned to the 'charming but aren't we moderns above it' ghetto of magical realism." Some critics, however, recognize the importance of the novel's themes: Ian Stavans, in his review of the novel for The Nation, praises its mapping of "the trajectory of feminist history in Mexican society." In an article in World Literature Today, Maria Elena de Valdes argues that the novel reveals how a woman's culture can be created and maintained "within the social prison of marriage." Esquivel's unique...